Google Glass: Yes, a prescription version is on its way

After showing off a few apps for Google Glass earlier this week, Google's Project Glass team has confirmed it will indeed make a prescription version of the networked spectacles available.

Whether Google will feature prescription lenses is one of the most common questions fielded by the Project Glass team, which yesterday confirmed it was "working hard" on perfecting its prescription design.

"The Glass design is modular, so you will be able to add frames and lenses that match your prescription. We understand how important this is and we've been working hard on it," it said in a Google+ update.

The prescription version is expected to be available at some stage later this year after Google releases the $1,500 Explorer Edition.

Google Glass posted a picture of team member, Greg Priest-Dorman, an "early pioneer in wearable computing," wearing prescription specs fitted with a prototype it is testing.

By early, Google means since the 1980s and, compared to the COTS-based wearables that Priest-Dorman details in his personal blog, the Google prototype is elegant and notably unencumbered by cords and other equipment.

Priest-Dorman has published a diary of various Glass-like set-ups he's built and worn since 2007, which unlike Glass, include cords, battery packs and networking gear.

Interestingly, for two decades he continued wearing devices without a full network connection, but bought a 3G plan in 2009, which he set up with a 800 x 600 display Tac-Eye made by Vuzix attached to his frames (pictured below).

Image: Greg Priest-Dorman

Priest-Dorman notes a few ergonomic challenges with the headsets, such as being unable to see the inside edge of the Tac-Eye's display when mounted to the screen. Another was balancing a crowded screen with the need to make images large enough to see quickly while wearing "and trying not to walk into a tree," he said.